Who Should Name the Craters on Mars, You or Astronomers?

The process was really easy. Through a website, I clicked on a map of Mars, chose my craters, and then paid to give them names. It was a bit easier than ordering a book through Amazon.

But by doing this, I’m sort of wading into the middle of a fight between Uwingu, an organization whose goal is to get the public involved in astronomy and fund scientific research, and the International Astronomical Union(IAU), a professional society of more than 10,000 astronomers that serves to promote scientific cooperation around the world.

Starting last month, Uwingu began creating their own maps of Mars using names for craters suggested by the public. Scientists have cataloged more than 500,000 craters on the Red Planet but have yet to name even a small fraction. Seeing an opportunity, Uwingu decided a good way to get names for all these holes in the ground was to ask ordinary citizens. For a small fee, anyone in the world can go to their website, select a crater, and give it whatever name they desire. Prices for the smallest craters start at $5 and go up based on the object’s size.

In just the first 10 days, Uwingu’s vox populi process assigned names to 7,000 Martian craters. Yes, they’re charging a bit of cash for the honor, but the proceeds go to funding grants for scientists working with organizations like the SETI Institute, Astronomers Without Borders, Mars One, and the Galileo Teacher Training Program.

This led to a response from the IAU, which oversees the process for naming features on other worlds. On Mar. 11, they released a statement basically calling bull on Uwingu’s user-pays method.

“The International Astronomical Union (IAU) would like to emphasize that such initiatives go against the spirit of free and equal access to space, as well as against internationally recognized regulations,” said the statement. “Hence no purchased names can ever be used on official maps and globes.”

In sum, if you give Uwingu money, you’re getting swindled. To which planetary scientist Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute and co-founder and CEO of Uwingu replied, “You guys ought to chill out.”

Stern added that he felt like the IAU was misguided in its criticism, making a mountain out of a molehill. “I think the IAU is way out of bounds on their concern. They seem to be very concerned by something that’s very harmless,” he said.

Uwingu co-founder Doug Griffith went even further, telling MSNBC’s Alan Boyle: “The IAU needs to stop being the self-licking ice cream cone of the scientific community, and recognize that as long as its existence is merely to gratify its own puritanical principles and sense of elitism, it is not going to be a part of the next wave of space exploration.”

Strong words. And I guess the question then is: "What’s the right way to name things on Mars?" And for that there’s no easy answer.

The IAU has a point. They’re an internationally recognized body that, since 1919, has been in charge of naming features on other worlds. They might be a bit stuffy and bureaucratic, but they get the job done. Plus, the names they eventually decide on are pretty creative and memorable.

While the public is invited to participate in the naming process, it’s not quite as easy as point and click. First of all, a probe has to visit and make good maps of some planet, moon, or asteroid. The members of an IAU task group choose a theme for feature naming. An astrogeographer or other scientist will then request a name for some interesting place or object. Names are suggested, reviewed, and eventually chosen by members of the Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature (WGPSN). Once they’re published in the Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature, they become official, appearing on all maps of the solar system.

It’s clear that this isn’t exactly a democratic process. As I learned from the IAU, the public can get involved but only in a limited way.

“We welcome suggestions from the public, but can’t guarantee that they will be used,” said astronomer Bradford Smith, chairperson of the Mars planetary system naming task group.

Anyone can contact the USGS’s Jennifer Blue and suggest a name for a feature on another world (and this suggestion is completely free). But this name simply goes into a database that the IAU task groups might one day consult if they need a new designation.

For quickly naming features, Uwingu’s method probably wins. The IAU has approved about 1,000 Martian crater names over the last 50 years; Uwingu did seven times this in its first week and a half. And Uwingu is probably right that their process gets people involved and excited in space exploration and astronomy education. People can name craters for loved ones and special places, which gives them a personal connection to Mars. On the other hand, they also end up with Mars crater names like “Cage Show’s Crack,” "Bananamancakes," and “The Stabbinator.”

It might also be important to point out that this isn’t the first time that Uwingu and the IAU have had this argument. A year ago, when Uwingu decided to create a database from popular suggestions for new exoplanet names, the IAU issued a response basically telling them to knock it off. And the IAU has attempted to do more public outreach. They were involved in a SETI institute contest to name the two most recently discovered moons of Pluto. After a field of popular suggestions and some internet voting, the IAU officially designated them Kerberos and Styx. (They rejected the popularity contest winner, Vulcan, because there were already too many astronomical objects with that name).

To really check everything out, I wanted to go through both naming processes. Because the IAU process takes much longer than would be possible in time for my deadline, I turned to Uwingu. I chose two small craters overlooking the epic Valles Marineris canyon system. (I wanted my craters to have good views.) For the first one, my order-loving brain wanted to follow the approved IAU conventions. Large Martian craters are named for famous scientists or science-fiction authors who have contributed to mankind's ideas of Mars and anything under 60 kilometers is named after a town on Earth.

Well, my first small crater — at Martian latitude: -12.23° N, longitude: 298.69° E — was just 1.03 kilometers across, so I named it for the city I currently live in, Oakland. (Here, I cheated a little because the towns are supposed to have a population of less than 100,000, which Oakland doesn’t.) On the second one, — at nearby latitude: -12.32° N, longitude: 299.22° E and 1.04 km across — I went with Spidershark, a perennial topic of discussion at WIRED's science desk as a creature we wish existed.

And, after paying the requisite $10 fee, I could sit back and marvel at my craters. What exactly does that give me, though? I think this is where we get to the heart of the matter, because it touches on why exactly people name things in the universe.

The IAU considers naming a feature on another world an extremely important process. They only assign something a name if it is considered sufficiently scientifically interesting to require one.

“Otherwise the maps would be covered with meaningless names or features that aren’t particularly important,” said Smith.

After all, the IAU represents scientists and it’s scientists who actually need to use these names in papers, meetings, and to discuss astronomical and geological processes with one another. That might explain why they get so apoplectic when someone else seems to be competing with their methods. 'It’s sowing confusion!' they'll claim. But confusion for whom?

Uwingu’s naming value is an attempt to be more universal. The crater names appear on their website and really nowhere else. Sure, the Mars-colonizing endeavor Mars One has promised that they will fly an Uwingu map to Mars in 2018. But at this point, Mars One’s ability to pull off such a mission remains in serious doubt.

Uwingu is completely up front about this. Their FAQ points out that nobody is claiming to give away property rights on Mars (unlike the historical hucksters who have attempted to sell off pieces of the moon) and the money from this is going to further scientific inquiry.

As Stern, an IAU member himself, told me, more than anything Uwingu is a public engagement project. “People are really enjoying that they have a little piece of Mars in their heart,” he said.

The names people give are a reflection of the internet’s hopes and desires in 2014, he added. With the Earth’s features all named, it’s a way for people in the 21st century to take part in exploration in a new way.

“This is a mass social experiment,” said Stern. “And I’m pretty excited about it.”